1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an improved data processing system and, in particular, to a method and apparatus for multicomputer system management.
2. Description of Related Art
Many enterprises view their computer systems as data centers. A data center consists of a variety of hardware resources and software resources. For example, hardware resources may include switches, load balancers, servers, and power units, whereas software resources may include database applications and e-commerce transaction applications.
Proper computer system management requires information about computer components and network components, the state of each of those items, and their relationships. In order to maintain the smooth functioning of a data center, the health of resources within the data center are checked using monitoring applications, which gather information about the state of a data center over a period of time. This information may include monitoring of networks, network paths, computers, operating systems, file systems, installed applications, software application components, user transactions, statistics of usage, and other information.
Many monitoring applications are commercially available which provide the ability to monitor a certain type of resource. While these software products have the same general purpose of resource monitoring, they differ in internal implementations and programmatic interfaces. For example, some monitoring tools are able to perform remote monitoring by communicating with a remotely deployed application using an appropriate, standardized, communication protocol, while other monitoring tools require the remote deployment of agents. Some monitoring applications provide further specialization by providing an independent monitoring component or resource model for each resource type. In order to use this variety of monitoring tools, a system administrator needs to be aware of many nuances that are associated with the usage of particular products in order to activate an appropriate monitoring behavior. For example, an administrative user needs to know: the availability of monitoring products from which the administrative user may select for performing certain operations; the manner in which the monitoring products deploy monitors or otherwise perform those operations; the types of security credentials that may be needed in order to deploy monitoring resources; and many other variables. In addition to knowing the details of the different monitoring products, a data center administrator also needs to understand the detailed configuration of the resources in the data center in order to deploy the appropriate monitoring components. Thus, the variability across these monitoring products represents a complex challenge for a data center administrator.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a system and a method that has the ability to manage multiple monitoring products in order to manage a data center more effectively.